The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are going to court as their Joint Operating Agreement collapses.
[Times publisher Frank] Blethen, whose company owns The Times and seven other papers in Washington and Maine, calls the P-I a "failing newspaper" and says The Times and Seattle readers would benefit from its closing.Blethen is correct to call the P-I a "failing newspaper". The Times would certainly benefit from the evaporation of its only local competitor, but I'm not sure how Seattle readers would benefit from having a monopoly newspaper. I'd hate to see the P-I close. But it would be nice to see it get rid of the dimwits on the editorial staff and hire enough people of clue so it can turn itself into a credible newspaper. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 28, 2003 02:40 PM
"People of clue" seem to be in short supply, particularly in the field of journalism.
Posted by: ed on June 29, 2003 03:42 PM I always assumed the Seattle Times entered into the JOA with the P-I because they wanted to keep any real competition out of the Seattle market. To call the P-I a competitor of the Times is to really stretch the meaning of the word. Both papers are rather to the left side of the spectrum and the Times gets most of the advetising revenue from the P-I. The Seattle Times has grown fat, dumb and extremely lazy in the meantime.
The P-I is a poor dead zombie that should be taken off of life support so it can go to that big Printing Press in the sky. Then maybe we can get so real newspaper competition in the Seattle area.